THE YOSEMITE.
"Well, Bess, old girl, we're off now for the jolliest time out!" cried Job as he vaulted into the saddle one June day, bound for the Yosemite Valley, that wonderful spot of which Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote on the old hotel register: "The only place I ever saw that came up to the brag."
Job had left the Yellow Jacket forever. The years were beginning to tell on the strong man of Pine Tree Mountain and Job was needed at home. So he had come. Standing one night on Lookout Point, watching the setting sun gild the far-off crown of El Capitan, he had resolved that before its glow once more set on the monarch's brow, he would mount Bess and be off to see again the sights on which old El Capitan had looked down for innumerable centuries. Perhaps the knowledge that Jane was there camping with her invalid father, who fancied that a summer in the valley would make his life easier, had something to do with the decision.
It was on one of those beautiful mornings in the California mountains which come so often and yet are always a rare, glad surprise, that Job, mounted on Bess, went singing down through the pasture gate, down past the charred ruins of the mill, past the familiar entrance to Dean's Lane, on toward the Frost Creek road and Wawona. It was a very familiar road. He stopped so long to chat with Aunty Perkins, halted Bess so long under the big live-oak at the Frost Creek school, and, leaning on her neck, gazed wistfully at the scenes of many a boyhood prank, that it was late in the afternoon when he passed the spot fragrant with memories of "Aunt Eliza" and "Mary Jane," galloped down the long hill, raced the coach and six just in from Raymond with a lot of tourists up to the Wawona Hotel, sprang off Bess, turned her over to a hostler and went into the office to register for the night.
That load of tourists furnished ample amusement for Job all that summer evening. He had read of such people, but this was the first time he had ever met them. There was the fat man, jovial and happy, always cracking a joke, who shook the dust off what had been that morning, before he began a ride of more than forty miles by stage, a respectable coat, and laughed merrily till it nearly choked him. There was the tall dude, with wilted high collar and monocle on his right eye, drawling about this "Bloomin' dirty country, don'cher know." Striding up and down the veranda with a regular tread that shook the long porch, with clerical coat buttoned up to the throat, and high silk hat which was not made for stage travel, was Bishop Bowne. His temper seemed unruffled by the vexations of the day as he remarked, "Magnificent scenery. Makes me think of Lake Como, only lacks the lake. Regular amphitheater of mountains. Reminds one of the Psalmist's description of Jerusalem." Darting here and there, trying to get snap-shots, were two "kodak fiends," two city girls who pointed the thing at you, bungled over it, reset it, pressed the button, and giggled as they flew off. They fairly bubbled over with delight as they saw Job, and debated how much to offer to get him to sit for a scene of rustic simplicity out by the toll-gate.
But Job was too busy to notice. He was being systematically interviewed by the fat, fussy woman in black who was asking him, "S'pose you've seen Pike's Peak, the Garden of the Gods, and Colorado Springs? Great place; we spent a whole half day there. No? Been to Monterey, of course, round the drive? We did it! Foggy, couldn't see a blessed thing; but it's fine; had to do it. What! never been there? Too bad, young man. Oh, there's nothing like doing the world. I've seen Paris, Rome, the Alps, Egypt. Oh, my! I couldn't tell how much! Sarah Bell, she knows; she's got it down in her note-book. Dear me! I must go and see what time we can start back for this place over there—what do you call it? Some Cemet'ry?"
"Yosemite," suggested Job.
"Oh, yes, Yosemitry. We ought to go right back to-morrow. We've got to do Alaska in this trip, or we'll never hear the end of it when we get back East. Nothing like doing the world, young man," said she, as she adjusted her bonnet and eye-glasses and hurried off to the office, where he heard her an hour later lamenting, "Sarah Bell, we have got to stay a whole precious day in that Cemet'ry before we can go back!"
It was late when the babble of voices died away, the stars kept watch through the tall pines of Wawona, and Job fell asleep to the piping of the frogs in the pond back of the hotel and the pawing of horses in the long barn across the square.
Yosemite Valley from Inspiration Point
"Inspiration Point!" called out the driver, as Job pulled up Bess the next day alongside the stage as it stood on the summit of that spot where the road from Wawona, which for miles has climbed up through the forest past Chinquapin and many a stage station, climbs still higher through the rare air of seven thousand feet, and then hurries down through the leaves of the trees, turns a bend and emerges in full view of the grand Yosemite.
There it lay in all its grandeur—the unroofed temple of God, Nature's great cathedral. Three thousand feet down, level as the floor, sunk beneath the surrounding mountains which stretched away to right and left in a gigantic mass, it lay clothed in a carpet of green grass and trees so far below that they seem to merge into one. Cut by a silvery stream that winds lazily amid the Edenic beauty, as if loath to be away, the valley a mile wide stretches back for nearly six miles, and then is lost to view as it wanders around the jutting peaks of the Three Sisters and climbs on for five more miles to the falls of the Merced, as they come tumbling down from the region of perpetual snow to that of perpetual beauty.
To the left is old El Capitan, three thousand feet high, and with width equal to height and depth to width—a mountain of solid rock. Well did the Bishop lift his hat, and, standing in silent awe, at last say, "The judgment throne of God." Far beyond it the silvery line of the Yosemite Creek reached the straight edge of the cliff and shot down twenty-six hundred feet. To the right, Bridal Veil Falls, a tiny brooklet it seemed in the distance, winding down a mountain meadow, looking frightened a moment at the edge of the cliff, leaping over into spray, caught up and transfigured by the afternoon sun, as it fell on the rocks hundreds of feet below. Beyond it, Cathedral Rocks, the Three Sisters and a mass of jutting summits stretching ever on till they were lost to view. Beyond and between them all, between and back, El Capitan and the Sentinel Peak, looming up, as the Bishop said, like "the sounding-board of the ages." From far away rose the Half Dome, at whose feet the famous little lake mirrors again and again the morning sun as it drives away the shadows of night from this home of the sublime.
Job instinctively bared his head and found himself repeating, "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth, from everlasting to everlasting Thou art God."
Just then the silence was broken by the voices in the stage. "Ain't it pretty?" said the giggler. "Well, now, is that the Cemet'ry? Do tell! Driver, you're sure we can go back to-day? We've seen it now!" said the fussy woman. The practical man was asking the driver for minute statistics and copying them down in his book, the dude was yawning and hoping there would be a dance at the hotel, while the Bishop got out and, walking away from the rest, stood and looked and looked and looked, till Job heard him intoning in a voice in keeping with the grandeur of the scene, "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth."
Job stayed behind as the stage rattled down the side of the mountain, tethered Bess by a big cedar, lay in a grassy nook and looked down, down, where the Merced abutted the base of El Capitan and tumbled down the narrow cañon that leads from the valley far below to the plains. All the reverence of his soul, all that was noble and lofty in him, rose as he gazed upon the scene. The littlenesses, the meannesses of the world, were left far behind. Like Moses of old, he was in the cleft of the mountains and the glory of Jehovah lay stretched out before him.
It was toward sunset when he reached the floor of the valley and walked Bess across the three bridges that span the branches of the Bridal Veil Creek, saw the bow of promise in the misty spray that seemed to ever hang in mid-air against the cliffs, galloped down the Long Meadow, past the Valley Chapel, and pulled up at the Sentinel House for the night.
That night the silver gleam of the Yosemite itself looked in at his window, as the new moon shone on its waters falling from the endless heights above, and the ripple of those waters soothed him to sleep as they rolled past his door, under the bridge and away down the valley.
In a most romantic little spot just across the bridge near the Falls of the Yosemite, and where the icy creek hides itself in bushes and reappears under the bridge, stood an abandoned Indian wick-i-up, half hid among the saplings. Here, throwing flap-jacks into the air with a toss over a crackling camp-fire, singing merrily, Job found Jane the next morning as he was roaming the valley in the early hours on Bess' back. It was a genuine surprise. She was not expecting him, even if she had dreamed of him all night. Her first impulse was to express with childish glee her real delight, but her very joy made her reserved. She restrained herself lest she should display her real feelings. She was glad to see him, of course; her father was better, and was off getting wood for the fire. Were the folks all well? Had he seen Dan lately? (Which question cut Job deeper that he liked to acknowledge.) Would she go up to Mirror Lake after breakfast? he asked. Certainly, if father did not need her.
So a little later, leaving Bess neighing behind in the camp, up the long, dusty road Jane and Job rambled on, past the pasture and the Royal Arches, on along the river bank, and, turning away to the left, climbed on the rise of ground into that nook where the South Dome seems almost to meet the Half Dome, and stood by the glassy waters of Mirror Lake. In that early hour before the ripples had stirred the surface, this lakelet at the foot of the Half Dome was worthy of all its romantic fame. Nine times that morning Job and Jane saw the sun rise over the rounded peak of the Half Dome, as they followed slowly the shores of the lake from sun-kissed beach to shadow. Jane went into ecstasies. Was it not beautiful! What a picture! The clear-cut rocky mountain, its low edges fringed with trees, its top so bare, the blue sky and passing clouds, that bright spot which rose so quickly far back of the topmost turn of the Dome, all mirrored at their feet.
Job's esthetic nature was stirred to its depths, and he echoed Jane's adjectives. Before they reached camp she had yielded to his appeal for another walk to-morrow, perhaps to Glacier Point and home by moonlight.
That night Job took his blankets from the hotel and stole over back of the Reeds' camp, just beyond the Indian's "cache" on the gentle slope of the open valley where the great wall of Eagle Peak rises four thousand feet. Among a lot of boulders which look for all the world like tents in the twilight, there, between two great pines, he lay down to watch the moonlight fade from Glacier Point yonder across the valley, and fell asleep at last to dream of the Berkshire Hills, the winding Connecticut, and the scenes of childhood days.
It must have been three o'clock—it was dark, very dark, though the stars were shining brightly—when something awoke him. He roused to find himself striking his nose on either side in a strange manner. Fully awake, he discovered the cause. Two tribes of ants living on opposite pine trees had completed a real estate bargain that night and had decided to change homes. By some chance they found his face in their pathway, but, perfectly fearless of the giant sleeping there, had kept on their journey, passing each other on the bridge of his nose. As he woke, the tramp of myriad feet crossed that feature, the procession for the right marching over between his eyes; the procession for the left, over the point. Silently, boldly, the mighty host climbed his cheeks, surmounted the pass, and hurried down, till, with many a desperate slap, Job at last sprang up, thoroughly awake. Ants, ants, ants—millions of them! Ants in his shoes, ants running off with his hat, ants in his pockets. It was an hour before the giant had conquered the dwarfs and Job was asleep again, well out of the way of any tree.
Mirror Lake, Yosemite.
The sun was shining in his eyes, the Indian's little black cur had come up and was barking at him from a respectful distance, and from behind a tree Job heard a girl's merry laugh, when he awoke the next morning.